Donovan’s birth story (June 9, 2006)

I knew before I got pregnant that I would have a home birth with this baby and any subsequent babies, but I decided about halfway into this pregnancy that a midwife-assisted home birth was still too medical and had too much potential for intervention for me—midwifery in Georgia is alegal and some of the unlicensed midwives in the area were prone to transfer at the slightest indication that things were getting challenging.

I started having dreams about giving birth alone in a safe, dark place, with no one around but Jon (and sometimes not even him). I then discovered unassisted childbirth, a concept I’d never thought of before— the idea of trusting your body to do what it needs to do, and giving birth without a medical professional’s assistance.

It immediately struck me as the right choice, and Jon only needed a little swaying after he began to read the available material on unassisted childbirth. We made the choice to have our baby in our own home, under our own care. We chose not to discuss this in great detail with most of our family and friends at the outset, but we began doing extensive research into what supplies and knowledge we would need to safely give birth at home, unassisted.

During the course of my pregnancy, I continued to receive backup care from a mainstream OB who was unaware of my plans to homebirth, let alone my plans to have an unassisted homebirth. The OB seemed very noninterventionist until I hit 37 weeks of pregnancy, when I had a bad car wreck. She wanted to do an internal exam (which I’d refused prior to then) to “make sure everything was ok” after the wreck. Shaken up and worried, I agreed. The pelvic exam was very painful and I asked what she was doing. “I’m just sweeping your membranes,” at which point I forcefully yelled, “NO! You ASK first!” She quickly began to stutter an explanation, that she thought she’d remembered a discussion back in April about me wanting my membranes stripped (which never happened), but of course couldn’t find anything in the file. Horribly upset, cramping, and feeling violated, I left the office and called my husband—who quickly called the OB and made sure she understood how much she’d crossed the line. He actually made her cry. I cramped and bled heavily for two days, but spent the time lying on the sofa resting, and occasionally sipping a glass of wine to slow the contractions—finally, it worked.

The rest of the “care” I received from her practice was an attempt to justify this assault of my body by diagnosing me with a problem. My OB was out of town the week after my membranes were stripped (surprise surprise) and another doctor was filling in for her—this doctor tried to convince me that I had pre-eclampsia (despite no protein in my urine) because I had a high blood pressure reading, the visit after the horrible experience with the membrane sweep! I refused the 24 hour urine collection, and this doctor told me, “Then we can just go across the street and have this baby today,” to which I answered, “’We’ aren’t having this baby. I am, and I’m not going anywhere with you.” I consented to some bloodwork, mostly to rule out any health issues for my sake, and the results showed (of course) that my health was excellent. The main OB I was seeing tried to convince me I had low fluid—again, my instincts were absolutely correct and there was nothing wrong with me. I did not return to the OB again until after my baby was born two weeks later and I will not return to an OB again for any prenatal care.

Thursday night (June 5^th), I began having regular contractions that eventually stopped when I went to bed. When I started having them again on Friday night, I assumed the same thing was happening, and that by midnight they’d taper off again. I went out to dinner at the local Mexican restaurant with my parents and Liam (age 5 1/2 at the time), as Jon was still recovering from the tummy bug he’d picked up during the week. I had regular contractions, about 15 minutes apart, during dinner. They felt more intense than they had the night before, but I didn’t want to get attached to the idea of being in labor, so I just relaxed and let them happen.

At about 7:45, the contractions went from intense to actually uncomfortable, though still 15 or more minutes apart. I got Liam ready for bed and tried to go about my normal evening routine. As I was reading to Liam at a little past 8pm, however, I had to pause during the contractions, which were about 10 minutes apart, give or take. After I got him into bed, I immediately started picking up our bedroom, changing the sheets, organizing and putting things away. With each contraction, I had to pause what I was doing, but I wasn’t really ready to admit I was in labor. I told Jon I expected the contractions to taper off soon. I kept saying this, even after my contractions were 5-6 minutes apart, and I could no longer talk through them—I had to make low moans to through each contraction, which helped immensely.

At this point, I checked my cervix—the one and only time I did so during labor. I knew I was at 1-2cm prior to labor due to a cervical check a few weeks prior—this meant that I was already dilated to the point it took me 48 hours to reach during Liam’s birth, but I still harbored a fear of another long, drawn out labor with little progress. I worried I would labor for days again and end up in the hospital after all. Checking myself, and realizing I was at 3-4, instantly relaxed me. I knew I could trust my body to do its job, so I stopped worrying about dilating, and started focusing on my contractions, relaxing into them, which was getting progressively harder.

I’m sketchy on time from here on out, because I made a point of seldom looking at the clock. Jon called my mother, and I talked to her for a few minutes, still insisting that this might not be it, so not to rush over (I wanted only Jon and my mother at the birth, and Liam if he was up for it). I went into the bathroom and emptied my body out in pretty much every way possible. Bye-bye Mexican food, but I felt much more ready for birth. Contractions were very intense and painful, but felt powerful. Jon was great, applying pressure on my back as I needed it or just helping me relax or simply listening to make sure he could hear me call if I needed him. I spent much of the next hour in the bathroom, partially because I had to pee after every contraction, and partially because it felt good to be alone, but safe knowing Jon was right outside the door when I needed him.

When it reached a point that the contractions seemed to be coming with almost no break, I had Jon call for my mom to come over. I then sat on the toilet for a while, because it seemed to make the contractions more bearable, and then ran a warm bath. While in the tub, I joked to Jon, “I’d like some drugs now, please, maybe some morphine?” He knew I didn’t mean it, though, and just laughed a little. Lying in the water got me through about three contractions, but then became completely uncomfortable. Jon helped me get out and towel off, then lie down on the bed.

My mother arrived right before I had another contraction. Jon told her what was going on, and she asked me if I was in transition. I looked at the clock then, and vaguely registered that it was almost 11pm—my first labor was 50 hour, and my brain told me there was no way I was in transition already. I’m pretty sure I answered, “No. Yes. I don’t know,” but Jon nodded his head yes behind my back. My next few contractions were right on top of each other, no break, and I couldn’t relax into them at all. As the next contraction began, I frantically jumped up from the bed and hurried to the bathroom. I felt pressure on my bladder. I sat back on the toilet and called Jon in. He sat on the floor in front of me and helped me remain calm and focused using some techniques we’d learned and worked on together. My next two contractions were actually soothing in a way—they felt very powerful, but not painful, and I could manage them with a low, deep moan. They felt like a calm before a storm, a gathering up of energy. I fell asleep in between them for a minute, it was so wonderful.

Suddenly, the next contraction hit me so hard that I literally jumped up from the toilet, though I didn’t know why. I couldn’t get comfortable, not even remotely. The contraction was beyond painful, it was driving me across the room. I went to the corner of the bathroom, next to the shower. I leaned on the shower, then squatted, turned in a circle in the corner like an animal making a bed, then went down on my hands and knees. As I raised back up into a squat, my water broke in an explosion. It sounded like someone had tossed a large water balloon into the bathroom. Amniotic fluid splashed onto the floor across half the bathroom, it seemed, including splashing Jon’s leg. He stepped into the doorway and called my mother in immediately. When my water broke, it did so with tremendous force, and I felt the sensation of the baby moving down rapidly. I put my hands down, and part of his head was out! The force of my water breaking had moved him out.

I put my hands on his head and held it. I called out, “I’m pushing” and my mother said “Are you sure?” I thought she was insane, because his head was out. I found out later that she meant it didn’t look like I was pushing, because I wasn’t straining at all. My body was doing the work for me. Before I could answer her, though, the rest of his head emerged and my mother reached to catch Donovan as I guided him into her hands—again, without a conscious push on my part, and almost no delay between the first push and the emergence of his body. I wasn’t even aware of Jon behind me, supporting me into a squat on the bathroom rug in the corner of the bathroom, and keeping me from falling into the shower, I just knew his presence was there and I was safe. From water breaking to Donovan’s birth was probably no more than 30 seconds, and my mother caught Donovan and handed him immediately to me.

He was crying but making no sound. My mother said very calmly, “Well, he’s not breathing,” and I instinctively blew a soft puff of air into his face. He immediately began to cry loudly. The umbilical cord was too short to bring him up to my chest, so I sank down onto the floor in a sitting position and put him across my belly. My mother draped a blanket across him, warm from the dryer, and I said to Jon, “He’s a Donovan,” because he had a full head of black hair. I felt so overwhelmed by what had happened, but also immensely calm at the same time. Not the calm of shock, but the calm of utter triumph and satisfaction.

My mother set down towels to mop up the huge puddle of amniotic fluid and blood, and Jon went to get Liam, who was too asleep to process what he was seeing. I waited for the placenta to come out, but it wasn’t happening right away, and we wanted to get Donovan someplace warmer than the bathroom floor right in front of the AC vent, so we checked to see that the cord was done pulsing, then Jon clamped and cut it — Donovan was separated from me! They took him into the bedroom to warm up a bit and weigh him, and I sat back on the toilet and almost immediately delivered the placenta. I checked to see that it was all in one piece, and it was. With a little help, I dried myself off a bit and went to lie down with my new son. He latched on pretty quickly and nursed well.

I felt pretty sore, but otherwise completely energized, not tired at all. I felt powerful, empowered, redeemed. My mother told me later that the birth seemed incredibly violent and yet calm, that it was almost like an animal birth — then she said violent wasn’t really the right word. I said “primal” and she agreed that is exactly what it was. I was completely in my primal brain, seeking out a safe, comfy corner (with a red rug, luckily), settling into it, and giving birth in a swift and powerful manner.

No one but family touched Donovan for the first four days of his life. He was never suctioned. He was never poked, injected, pricked, or touched roughly. No stinging drops in his eyes, no shots to force his blood to clot. His body touched no cold metal or hard surfaces. He was touched with love, soft things, his bottom wrapped in a soft cloth diaper, his body placed on his mother’s warm belly. He was spared all the cold interventions Liam had to suffer. He was wrapped warmly and nestled between his parents, and the whole family was asleep by just past 1am. He is the most mellow and alert baby I have ever met.

Liam’s birth (my first birth, hospital) made me feel like my body was broken, like it couldn’t do it. I felt overrun by the medical profession, like my choices had been taken away from me. I felt violated. With Donovan’s birth, however, I know that my body is powerful and capable. I needed no doctors, no midwives, no interventions. My son was born into a loving, safe environment. It was perfect. I did go in to see the (cervical assaulter) OB the Monday after he was born, who pressured me to allow her to give me three intramuscular stitches to stabilize my 2^nd degree tear, but in the future I will just stay in bed with my legs together and let it heal without worrying about it!

Rosie’s Birth Story (March 27, 2009)

I had an uneventful, unassisted pregnancy – I provided all my own prenatal care. I felt confident and happy throughout my pregnancy!

On Thursday, 3/26, I spent the day doing a Quilt Shop Hop around the Greater Metro Atlanta area w/ my mom and grandmother. I was feeling really done by the end of the day, and really didn’t expect to make it through the weekend still pregnant. I was right!

Jon (my husband) rubbed my back for a while that night and I noticed that when he was rubbing straight down my lower back, I’d have really strong Braxton Hicks and the massage felt great. I had him do that for a while, and then dozed off. I woke up at around 1am, only an hour or so later, having what I first thought were regular Braxton Hicks, but soon realized were light, but regular, contractions. I dozed off and on for a while, before they were too strong for me to keep sleeping. At that point, I told Jon what was going on, but that he didn’t need to get up yet. I went downstairs to time my contractions for a while (2 minutes apart, 45 seconds long) and to update LJ/Facebook (I see now that was about 2am). I called Sarah to let her know that I was in labor, but probably wouldn’t need her for a while, and then did the same w/ my mom.

I fixed myself some miso and some Emergen-C, because I hadn’t slept much and knew I’d need some energy for a potentially long road ahead. I had a strong feeling the labor wouldn’t be as quick as Donovan’s. I went into the front bathroom and sat on the toilet for a while, because that’s a really comfortable place for me to sit while I’m in labor. The contractions were getting a little harder, but the miso was very nice and the Emergen-C perked me up a lot. Donovan woke up and I took him to the potty, then tried to get him settled back down. He kept accidentally bumping my belly while I was contracting, though, so I woke up Jon and told him he needed to handle Donovan if he woke back up again (he didn’t, though, thank goodness).

Things started getting heavier. At that point, it was 3:12 and I called Sarah to come over. I lay down on my bed on my side and moaned a lot during contractions, occasionally getting up to pee and spend a few contractions on the toilet. At this point, I discovered my first birth mantra: the Blue Mint McBee song. Donovan made up the Blue Mint McBee song about halfway through my pregnancy and sang it to my belly almost every day. It goes “Blue Mint McBee, Blue Mint McBee, in my belly…come out my belly and get ninny milk, and blue meme [ice cream]!” When my contractions would start getting intense, I’d “sing” (it’s a fairly monotone tune) some variation of the song. Sometimes it was “Come out my belly and stop hurting me” or “and get ninny and see me!” It helped to focus on the goal of this whole process and it was almost like we were working together to get through it.

Sarah got there at about 3:40. She sat near the bed while I had contractions and sang to Blue Mint McBee, then moved to the chair. At one point I had a strong contraction and when I opened my eyes, Sarah was on the floor by the bed again. I apparently asked her if she bent the space/time continuum, because I didn’t know how she got there so quickly. In between contractions, I must have been pretty funny, because Sarah said I should have my own stand up act.

Jon called my mom at around 3:50. At the time, I was kind of annoyed because I felt like I had a really long time still to go, and she would get there too soon and it would be one more person sitting around and staring at me. I get a little paranoid in labor and you must avert your eyes while I’m having a contraction. Sarah says I could notice people looking at me even if my own face was covered!

My time gets really fuzzy around here. I know I went back into the bathroom for a while and had contractions there. I also made the mistake of checking my cervix, and it didn’t feel like anything had happened, which of course really devastated me. See, this is why we all tell people to avoid cervical checks! They don’t do anything but daunt you! I’ve had a lot of anxiety relating to my cervix since my miscarriage, which was managed w/ misoprostol (Cytotec). Even though I know misoprostol is safe for first trimester pregnancy loss, I’ve had bouts of fear throughout my pregnancy that it may have done something to my cervix to damage it in some way. I know I asked Sarah and my mom if they thought it could have caused scarring that would keep it from opening up, but they assured me it didn’t work like that. I also worried that it wasn’t strong enough to dilate correctly. I think my worries over my cervix opening may have actually been a hindrance to it doing so.

I alternated between bathroom and bed for a while. I also tried some other spots in the room for contractions, like the rocking chair and the yoga ball. This is how The List got started. The List was the list of everything I hated during labor, in order. First on the list was the chair. I told Jon to remind me that I hated the chair and must not have any more contractions in it. When I tried the ball, I hated it as much as, if not more than, the chair, so I put it on The List and banished it from my sight. Later I added sitting on the bed and one particularly bad contraction to the list. I also apparently made some comments about how I should have ordered a baby from a catalog and how we should have just gotten a beagle, which made Sarah have to try hard not to laugh. I could hear her choking back a laugh occasionally, which sometimes irritated me and sometimes made me smile.

My mom had arrived at this point, not exactly sure when, because I wasn’t looking at a clock. The contractions had started to really hurt at this point, far more so than they ever had during my previous two labors. They HURT. I was in pain and it was freaking me out a bit. I made everyone promise to keep me honest when I wrote about it and not say “it was just intense, not painful” like I did about Donovan’s birth (which really was just intense, not badly painful). Well, no problem there, because it was honestly some of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced. It was terrifying, agonizing pain that just kept moving lower and lower, and finally started spreading through my back in my first-ever back labor experience. I couldn’t be still on the toilet or the bed, so I started doing all kinds of movements, anything that felt right. I squatted, leaned on furniture, arched my back forward and backward, swiveled my hips, lunged — anything that would change position (mine or the baby’s) enough to alleviate the tiniest bit of pain.

I asked Sarah and my mom to leave the room at somewhere around this point, so I could be alone with Jon.

I felt my cervix again and it didn’t feel much more open than it had before, but I could feel the baby’s bag of waters bulging out through the opening. The sensation was like the bag was manually dilating my cervix from the inside, rather than my cervix opening on its own to let the bag out. The pressure was so maddening that I actually tried to pinch a hole in the bag with my fingertips out of pure desperation to relief the pain/pressure against my cervix, but apparently all that vitamin C paid off and it was an amniotic sac of steel, which was probably for the best.

Which each contraction, I could feel the baby moving further down into my pelvis. I moved beyond the Blue Mint McBee song to chanting “Down down” or “ow ow ow” or just sort of roaring/moaning in a loud, deep voice. If I moaned with my teeth together at a specific pitch, it would vibrate my body enough to ease the pain, but the pitch changed slightly at each contraction. Nothing that felt good at one contraction was guaranteed to feel good by the next one. I went with whatever my body told me to do, however strange a position. I know I contorted myself into some odd positions, because my neck, back, arms, legs, etc. were all so sore the next day.

Throughout most of labor, I had the most interesting sensation of my brain being completely divorced from my body and able to clearly understand what was happening. Sarah said that I would say, “I can do it. I can do THIS one” at the beginning of contractions, which is something that we (her labor support people) would tell HER during her labor with Bastian, that she could do this one, only focus on this one and get through it. I felt like my brain was my body’s labor support and was telling it all the things I’d told Sarah during her labor. Even when my mind and body got swept up in that labor fog, the little voice stayed clear-headed and told me that I was in the labor fog and just to go with it.

With my boys, I had very little awareness of entering transition. With this labor, however, that clear-headed voice told me very clearly what was going on. My labor mantra switched to something like: This is transition. I know it won’t last long, but it sucks and I need it to be over. The baby was so low and my lower back hurt so badly. My uterus also had a sharp, burning pain directly over my pubic bone. I don’t know if it was malpositioning, and she had to rotate or move a limb and that’s why it hurt so badly, but it honestly felt like two swords had been stabbed into my back at angles right above my hips, so that they crossed and came out right above my pubic bone. I have never experienced pain like it in my life — it was worse than gallstones, broken bones, anything else. It was blinding, burning pain. I wasn’t moaning at that point, but roaring, because it kept my tone low and kept me from screaming. The contractions were right on top of eachother, long and hard and painful without break. I started praying through contractions, just “God, please help me through this. Just get me and my baby through this.” The pain was so great that I felt light-headed and actually thought that losing consciousness momentarily would be a blessed relief.

I was at a breaking point, about to lose it, and I finally asked God, out loud, to give me a tiny break, just a short rest from the pain, because I couldn’t do it anymore. Suddenly I had this strong, clear pull toward the shower. It was like the shower was suddenly the only thing in focus, which gave the sensation of it being lit up and everything else being dark and fuzzy. I turned the water on hot and stepped in, aiming it at my back, thinking maybe I needed to be in there to help the back pain. Nothing. Again, I had a strong, clear sense of needing to turn around and aim the hot, hot water onto my belly. The contractions stopped! For about 45 whole blissful seconds, I was completely without pain — this was the longest break I’d had in the contractions for about an hour! When the next contraction started, it still hurt just as bad, but I felt like I could handle it a little bit better. I had to get right out of the shower, though, because the water on me during a contraction was horrible.

I went back into the bedroom and leaned onto the bed. Jon was sitting on the bed. When the next contraction hit, he reached his hands out toward me and I took them and sort of dangled from his hands in a squat off the side of the bed. This helped a lot for two contractions, but then I had to move again, so back into the bathroom. It wasn’t too much longer after that when I felt the baby start descending into my birth canal. I was leaning on the changing table in the bathroom and just kept getting lower, leaning on the first shelf, then lower, leaning on the bottom shelf, until I was on all fours on the floor. I felt the unmistakable need to push. I yelled to Jon to get everyone, to make sure Liam was up, because I was pushing and if they didn’t hurry, they’d miss it. Oddly enough, Jon had predicted earlier in the pregnancy that I’d end up pushing on all fours, but I didn’t think I would. He was right, though!

Pushing always felt good in the past. No so much this time. I felt like I couldn’t get enough force behind my pushes because of my position, but I also knew that moving was absolutely impossible and that I needed to be in that position. With the first real push, my water broke, but only a little came out, the water that had been in the bulging bit of bag in front of her head. I pushed about 3 times and felt her head stretching out my perineum. It hurt like hellfire. Jon was trying to support my perineum, but couldn’t quite figure out how to do it in that position. Everyone made it upstairs to the bathroom just as I was screaming at Jon, “Don’t spread my cheeks apart!” (he wasn’t, of course). I pushed hard, because I didn’t really have any choice in the matter, and felt her head coming out. I was sure her whole head had to be out, and when Jon said halfway, I think I kind of half-shrieked, “Halfway?!?!” and then pushed really hard again, upon which her whole head was out. I reminded Jon to check for the cord (no cord) and said I was waiting until the next contraction to push again. At one point I thought he was pulling on her head, but it actually was the sensation of her rotating, which I’d never actually experienced before. I raised myself up on my hands a little higher and dropped my butt down lower so it would be easier to push out her body, and then with the next contraction, screamed loudly and pushed hard and felt her body and the rest of the amniotic fluid come out in a rush.

I felt her drop down low and I may have asked Jon if he dropped her, which is almost what happened. He didn’t realize her body would shoot out so quickly, and she was so slippery that she slid down his hands (which were right above the floor) and onto the floor and then a little bit across the puddle of amniotic fluid on the floor. Either my mom or Jon picked her up (I couldn’t see, as I was still trying to turn over without yanking her cord) and they both blew gently in her face to get her to breathe well and pink up. She cried one or two good cries, at which point I had turned over and was sitting on my bottom on the floor, and they handed her to me. She immediately calmed down and just stared directly into my eyes for a while, perfectly calm and steady and just really THERE in a way I’d never seen a newborn be before (Donovan was so mad that he cried for a long time). I asked, “Is she really a girl?” and they said, “yes!” and I said, “Did we confirm it?” and checked her myself (she was). She looked small to me, but felt SO heavy! Everyone said they thought she looked pretty big, including Sarah, which should have clued me in that she was a good-sized baby.

Within a couple of minutes, baby girl was already snuffling for the nipple and latched on great, nursing for quite a while. I started having bad afterpains and wanted to try to pass the placenta, which I couldn’t do sitting on my bottom on the floor, nor could I get up with her still attached, because once again I had a baby with a super short cord! We sat there for a good long while until the cord was completely limp and white, then Jon got the clamps, clamped the cord, and cut it. I sat on the toilet and almost immediately passed the placenta, with comparatively little bleeding. I retrieved it from the toilet, checked it out to make sure it was whole. It, too, was very heavy, more so than Donovan’s, and was very thick across the middle and almost perfectly circular, like a slightly flattened ball. I also noticed that my amniotic fluid (which was all over the floor) felt thicker and less watery than it did with Donovan.

Jon and my mom took baby Rosaline into the bedroom so I could get showered up, which felt wonderful. I knew I’d torn again and so I took a quick peek with a hand mirror — a tiny 1st degree tear upward from my urethra and a long, but not deep, second degree tear downward, right where I’d torn with Donovan, though not nearly so deep.

I got into bed with my baby. She nursed some more and stayed awake for a long time, moving her eyes to find voiced and even turning her head to look at people, such an incredibly alert baby. We rigged up a receiving blanket to use on the hanging scale and weighed her. I was shocked to hear she weighed 9lb 4oz! My biggest baby yet.

Jon made me a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, which was the most amazingly delicious thing ever, and then I spent the rest of the morning nursing my baby and dozing.

I’ve been a little shell shocked over the experience, because I had absolutely no expectations that it would be so painful. My previous two labors weren’t anything like this, and I’d really been looking forward to giving birth. I’m proud of myself for getting through it without asking for help or drugs or intervention. That never crossed my mind. I never indulged the desire to say “something’s wrong!” and have someone “save” me, because I knew nothing was wrong. I felt like I asked God for help and was given the help I needed. I also feel a little confused and angry with my body, a little let down that this was my final birth experience and it was so agonizing. Maybe it was good that I had a birth like this, because it didn’t sway me in my feelings about the important of natural home birth (or unassisted birth) at all. There was nothing I would have done differently, nothing a midwife could have done for me at home, nothing a doctor could have offered but drugs and numbness, which sure, would have probably felt incredible at the end, but would also have robbed me of the sensations and experience and power. I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

Anyway, that’s the first draft of my unassisted homebirth story of Rosaline Clare, born 3/27/09 at 6:03am, 9lb 4oz, 21 inches long.

Morgan has had two homebirths

Filed under: who homebirths?